slight improvement. His want of great age, too, seemed a source of hope, for no one recollected that 
Ampère might have said, with the Dutch artist Van Orbeeck, "Count double, gentlemen, count double, 
for I have lived day and night!" 
Our associate did not share the hopes of his friends. When leaving Paris he knew himself near 
death, proof of which I have found in a letter recently sent to me, in his answer to the urgent 
exhortations of the chaplain of the college at Marseilles. “Thanks, M. Abbé, thanks; before 
starting on my journey I performed all my religious duties.” Ampère’s resignation in his last 
moments astonished all who knew his excitable disposition, his lively imagination and warm heart, no 
one ever expected to find him display the calmness of that ancient philosopher, who, on the bed of 
death, requested to have all disturbing influences removed, in order, he said, to be able the better 
to observe what would take place at the exact moment of the separation of soul and body. A few 
moments before our associate lost entire consciousness, M. Deschape, provisor of the college of 
Marseilles, beginning to read in a low voice the Imitation, Ampère remarked that he "knew the book 
by heart" These were, I believe, his last words. In addition to the fatal chronic affection of the 
lungs, he was now seized with a high fever; and on the 10th of June, 1836, at five o’clock in the 
morning, our illustrious associate, sinking under the accumulated bodily and mental sufferings of 
sixty years, as Buffon so beautifully expresses it, “died before he had finished living.” 
The same day the wires of Marseilles transmitted the sad news to Paris, where it excited, as you 
remember, the most profound and universal grief. And let no one think this swift aerial messenger 
dropped, in this instance, its official role to intrude itself info the domain of private life; for 
Ampère’s death was a public calamity. 

[The following sketch, which was originally published in Blackwood’s Magazine, furnishes an 
illustration of some traits of the character of Ampère as presented by Arago:] 

Ampère, the friend of Davy, and whilome one of the great natural philosophers of France, is 
selected for this sketch, not from the space he at present occupies in science, but for la 
petite comédie que voici (1) and the amiable old age he exhibits. You see a venerable 
octogénaire (2) of small stature, clad in a coat of grotesque cut, on which the marks of 
climactercial decay are as visible as upon the excellent old man who has borne it for a quarter of a 
century. He has parted with his teeth, his memory, and his elasticity of step, but he retains his 
bonhommie, his delightful mannerism, and ever and anon exhibits some flickerings of that 
enthusiasm in the cause of science with which he began life and without which nothing is to be done. 
I dare not, however, meddle with the splendid fragments of that genius which so often startles you 
into the conviction that a great man is addressing you, I have been present at 

(1) The little farce which follows. 
(2) An eighty year old.